Jeevan Finds Her Master

This article is included in "Past the Point of No Return" by Bhagawati, a collection of Osho sannyasin stories about finding their master. In this book, the title of this piece is "You Have Been Here Long Before You Came." The publisher is Osho World and the distributor link: www.dkpd.com

In 1972, at the age of 45, after I had raised 4 kids, my husband and I moved into a Los Angeles commune where three of my teenaged children lived. The commune was called Ellis Island, named after the place where the Statue of Liberty stands in the New York harbor. This is where immigrants from the old world come to seek a new life. This house, with 12 young friends including my kids welcomed us with love and curiosity. We lived collectively, with no hierarchy, meeting together once a week to deal with any difficulties that arose. Also at that time, I was in-training as a Radical Therapist with a Women’s Collective in Venice, California and living in this atmosphere was a great help for all the changes I was going through after 27 years of marriage.

There came a time when I wanted out of any family relationships. I had read many books including Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous and was blown away by it, and Gurdjieff’s ideas as well. I was also influenced by David Cooper’s Death of the Family. In this book, this “anti-psychiatrist” colleague of R. D. Laing, describes communes where “someone knows and everyone knows he knows.” After a year of living at Ellis, I moved into a VW van to live on the road in California wanting to find that kind of teacher, alive.

I had a boyfriend then who was spouting some interesting ideas and he recommended I go to the Living Love Center in Berkeley, California. The teacher there was a beautiful paraplegic in his fifties, Ken Keyes, Jr. He had written a book called Handbook to Higher Consciousness which impressed me.

When I arrived there, they all looked so beaming and were singing happy songs but because I was still pretty miserable, I didn’t trust them and I didn’t join in on that day. But I did sign up for a group to happen in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, as part of the preparation for the group, I had to memorize twelve very difficult Pathways to Higher Consciousness.

I arrived on a Friday evening to start the group, parking my van in the lot. The first thing we were instructed to do was to take mattresses to board up the windows and doors all over the huge meditation room. The second thing we were told was to take off all our clothes! Then the facilitator explained this Rajneesh Chaotic Meditation in 5 stages. And we began! Boom Boom Boom!

I did the Meditation as totally as I was capable of and at the end I couldn’t stop sobbing. I must have continued crying the whole evening, while the group happened around me. I had not been aware of how much grief I was carrying. That meditation changed my life.

The next day, my first question was “Who or what is this Rajneesh?” I sure knew what the Chaotic Meditation was. And the answer came in the form of a gorgeous picture of this black-bearded god, and I fell in love with him at first sight. The next piece of the puzzle was in the form of the 1973 Rajneesh Newsletter, Tantra Edition, which included highlights taken from the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra along with a few letters he had written: these sealed my fate – I had found my master! And the rest is history, so to speak.

From that day on, I have never wandered from my path of love and gratitude for this man, and still much was yet to happen.

I was given an offer to live in the Living Love Center, work there and do groups. We slept on cots in the basement of the house. Ram Dass, aka Dr. Richard Alpert, the ex Harvard professor who had worked with Timothy Leary on their LSD experiments, was Ken’s mentor. I listened to many of his tapes and found them helpful and fascinating. I had yet to hear Osho’s discourse because I didn’t want to be disappointed by his voice. I learned to love Ken and the work that he was doing, supported by sannyasin caretakers, one of whom I became close to – Ma Samadhi from France. When I saw her dance, one evening, I knew someone was “behind” her…and of course it was Osho!

After a while, I still had a travel bug, so I was bound for Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, carrying Osho’s books and magazines with me, underlining them and leaving them behind when I finished them. Pune wasn’t yet on my agenda. I had a boyfriend I was chasing around who looked like Osho – a Persian Mexican – which took up a lot of emotional energy. And then came the day, after many exciting experiences, that he told me, “Shana, get the fuck out of my life!”

That shock devastated me, and sent me to Swami Shanti Sagar in Santa Monica, who I felt a connection with. We did Dynamic Meditation on the beach, and returned to his flat. Getting out of my van, I broke my necklace with a fairy on it. When I got into the flat, he said, holding up a mala, “You can have this one!”

“No, not for me,” I replied, “too much like priests.”

“You belong,” he answered, and handed me two packages of orange dye!

That did it. After we showered, he and Shakti, his girlfriend, set up a little altar with an Osho robe and his slippers, candles and incense. They stood beside me after he put the mala around my neck and I cried, feeling incredible joy: I had come home.

He told me to send my picture and write my story and send it to Bhagwan, which I did. I received the answer two weeks later; it read as follows:

Beloved Jeevan,

Love,

We are happy that you have taken the jump into Sannyas and are sending you the beautiful new name which Bhagwan Shree has given to you: Ma Prem Jeevan. Now completely forget the old name and just let life flow through you from moment to moment.

It is good that you are already wearing orange. Soon you will start to feel the blissful effect it has on your life. The orange life is a blissful dance.

Many things are happening here and much is possible through being here – so come soon…

His blessings,

Ma Yoga Laxmi

By then, I had heard Osho’s tape discourses, adored his picture, read a few books that were then available and here was my invitation to Pune. I was ready to go. I bought a ticket and was there within a month.

This is my first Darshan from Nothing to Lose But Your Head, February 1976

(to a newly arrived sannyasin) Something to say? When did you arrive?

JEEVAN: (a bubbling, extroverted, middle-aged American sannyasin)

About five or six days ago…and I’m really glad to be here. (she chuckles) I think you’re dynamite!

(chuckling) Very good.

JEEVAN: I want you to tell me the truth about me…I think I’m great.

I already told you!

JEEVAN: I know. I get all your messages…. It’s good to be here.

You have been here long before you came.

JEEVAN: I know that! I’ve been in your heart and you’ve been in mine.

Good…very good Jeevan! (the group laughs)

Osho assigned me many groups in the ‘70s, and I poured myself into them. I stayed in Pune for six months and then left for Geetam Ashram in California, returning to Pune in l977 to remain “forever.” And looking back on my life, 30 years later, it is still so: I am Osho’s forever.

After living for three years at Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, I’ve lived in Pune since 1986 when Osho returned from his world trip, working in the Ashram/Commune/Resort in many capacities. I was last an editor for the OSHO Times, and can now be reached at oshojeevan@gmail.com

MA PREM JEEVAN Love Life

Born May 9, 1927, in NYC

Took sannyas: Full Moon 1975

Presently living in Pune, India

THE END